» Day 4—Part 1: A Tour of the Walker Art Gallery
This is the sixth blog post in a series written by Georgette Mayo, Avery Research Center’s Processing Archivist, reflecting on her trip to London and Liverpool in October 2024.
Our day began with a lunch meeting in the World Museum’s boardroom with Fahy Anne, head of the World Museum, Nasra Elliot, community engagement manager of the International Slavery Museum, and staff. Afterward, we walked to the Walker Art Gallery to meet with Sandra Penketh, executive director of Galleries and Collections Management, who provided a whirlwind tour through several galleries.
The themes throughout Liverpool museums are the modern-day critique and interrogation of past work and how the past informs the present, thus making it relevant to the viewer. The Carving Out Truths exhibition is a “community-led research and intervention display confronting links to slavery, colonialism and empire.” The museum has worked closely with youth from Liverpool’s “Black and Global Ethnic Majority” communities to research and reinterpret its internationally renowned sculpture collection.
Now You See Me is an exhibition featuring Chis Day, a blown-glass and mixed-media artist, and his response to the Walker’s lack of Black representation in its collections. Rather than overlook the young Black servant in an eighteenth-century painting, Day “aims to shed light on his story through his mirrored glass artwork.”
Our delegation previewed the upcoming exhibit Conversations. Amid the exhibit’s construction and partial installations, we viewed works by forty “leading” Black women and non-binary artists.
I gravitated to the Stitching Souls: Threads of Silence installation by Karen McLean. The work comprises 132 heads created in authentic African fabrics using traditional quilting techniques. McLean’s work memorializes and honors the enslaved African people who lost their lives in the 1781 Zong Massacre.
Next, we met the Lord Mayor of Liverpool, which will be detailed in Day 4-Part 2.
Image Credits
- Georgette Mayo, “Conversations artist panel with Glenis Redmond,” personal photograph.
- Ibid., “Stitching Souls installation,” personal photograph.
- Ibid., “Stitching Souls text panel,” personal photograph.